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1. Pat Roberts was 78 years old and will be 84 or 85 when his term expires. As such he is not able to drive hard against the left-wing deconstruction of our liberties. Pat Roberts is not the man for this season.

2. Pat Roberts is not set foot in Kansas except to campaign since Dorothy went skipping down the yellow brick road. He declined to debate the Challenger.

3. Milton Wolf was an able candidate, with impeccable conservative credentials, a physician, quite articulate on TV albeit with relatively minor personal peccadillo in his background who campaigned on reforming Washington where Pat Roberts has presided over and too often participated in the disintegration of our liberties and our Republic.

4. The setback in Kansas is not isolated but part of a pattern across the country in which we see establishment Republicans prevailing over Tea Party reformers.

5. The loss was not close, seven or eight points.

It is the inability of reformers overall to energize even conservative electorates in Kansas and elsewhere at a time of real peril to the nation and to our liberties that is dispiriting. Even if we search out ways to rationalize this result, the same article could have been written about Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Lamar Alexander in Tennessee, Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. The inertia is discouraging because it is nearly ubiquitous.

As I say, an "able" candidate who has not gone through major campaigns that expose weaknesses, dirt, ANYTHING that might damage a campaign is asking for trouble.

This is precisely the kind of head-in-the-sand problem that so many Tea Party candidates have: campaigns vet candidates. Say what you want about Hillary, virtually everything that could be thrown at her has already been thrown.

It is unnecessary to remind me of Roberts' weaknesses. But those weaknesses were a "devil we know" kind of thing compared to an unknown. To continue to restate the virtues of people such as Milton while ignoring the practical, very important weaknesses of inexperienced outsiders running will continue to produce the same results.

The classic example of this was Alan Keyes. Keyes is a brilliant man, extremely articulate. But he carefully never ran for a seat he could actually win---a House seat, for example. He ran as a very conservative candidate for the senate in Maryland, then had a joke of a campaign for the senate in Illinois. Not a STATE senate position in either case, but the US senate. Such candidates are not serious. I think Milton was more serious, but lack of name recognition combined with the "un-vetted-ness" that allows the last-minute dirt campaign of the opponent is a sure loser. Cantor is not a good example here because that was a US House seat in a vastly smaller territory where name recognition could be overcome quickly. And, as I said, Roberts didn't have a bad ACA rating, despite his age and despite his inability to "drive hard." Being able to simply post "Here's how I voted" and have people look at it and say, "Well, that's a pretty good record" is very hard to overcome.

So, I'm not surprised at all, and don't think it has anything to do with being "unable to reform." It has to do with political realities that too many Tea Party types ignore (see Christine O'Donnell).

You make some significant points. Certainly, if Roberts' younger opponent was able to articulate well on TV, that would recommend him to many. (The ability to speak at length on TV, without the crutches on which less adequate candidates rely, can be enormously beneficial to any candidate.) But in any election, you have to recognize that all sorts of sentimental factors are always in play.

An incumbent who has not overtly betrayed his constituents, will always have a certain residual vote. Remember that most voters are not really ideological. If they are not offended by someone's offensive behavior, they will not ordinarily change a previous voting pattern.

Finally, a loss by only 7 or 8%, in a race against a long-serving incumbent, is generally seen as a very strong showing. I suspect that it will move Senator Roberts to the right, if anything. And the fact that he stood with Ted Cruz at a crucial moment, suggests that he will indeed move in that direction--not that he was ever a Left-Winger.

William Flax

>> 1. Pat Roberts was 78 years old and will be 84 or 85 when his term expires. <<

When I first started lurking on FR, Storm Thurmond was 96 years old and would be 100 years old when his term expired in 2003. His voting record was similar to Roberts -- not perfect (he voted the wrong way on a handful of important bills) but definitely one of the more reliably conservative senators. Nobody screamed "RINO!!" at Strom, called him Democrat-lite, insisted that "its time for the old geezer to go or be pushed", or recruited some unknown clueless amateur from Spartenberg to oppose him. Back then, we fought to remove actual RINOs like Arlen Specter, instead of eating our own and wasting lots of time and money to purge people who agree with us.

>> 2. Pat Roberts is not set foot in Kansas except to campaign since Dorothy went skipping down the yellow brick road. <<

Neither had Liz Cheney in Wyoming when she decided to run for Senator there a few months ago, but since she was the self-proclaimed "Tea Party" candidate, 90% of the Milton Wolf cheerleaders were TOTALLY supportive of her running in a state she hadn't lived in since she was 12. Back in January, The Tea Party Express, RedState.com, Mark Levin, etc., had no problem whatsoever with a decades-long resident of Virginia running for Senator elsewhere. Sorry guys, the "treasonous when Roberts does it but awesome when Liz Cheney does it" message didn't help your cause. Maybe next time you shouldn't change your principles from candidate to candidate.

>> 3. Milton Wolf was an able candidate, with impeccable conservative credentials <<

Stop right there. You are describing someone who doesn't exist. What were his "impeccable conservative credentials". Name one "conservative" thing he had ever done or said in public prior to running for Senate. Not a single Milton Wolf cheerleader has been able to answer this question (and Fieldmarshaldj has poised it every thread), because Milton Wolf's "conservative credentials" didn't exist and his "fearless conservative fighter" persona was invented for a Senate race. Anyone can promise anything to get elected, that doesn't give them "impeccable credentials" to demonstrate it. Wolf's appeal was much like his "cousin" Obama in 2008: a "fresh and new" politician with no political track record who gives slick speeches promising to fundamentally change Washington DC if we elect him.

>> 4. The setback in Kansas is not isolated but part of a pattern across the country in which we see establishment Republicans prevailing over Tea Party reformers. <<

Wolf is part a pattern of embarrassing Tea Party "reformers" who turn out to be terrible candidates. That puts him in the same category as jokes like Sharon Angle and Ken Buck. When the Tea Party runs CREDIBLE candidates, they've won numerous times. Read up on Ben Sasse, Jodi Ernst, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, David Brat, etc., etc. I guarantee you none of them ran on being distantly related to Obama. They could stand on their own two feet.

>> 5. The loss was not close, seven or eight points. <<

Yes, again, because Milton Wolf sucked and had nothing to offer voters but endlessly talk about how he's distantly related to Obama and that electing him would somehow "embarrass Obama". You can't win with nobody, sorry. If Roberts had been an ACTUAL RINO and you had a PROVEN conservative running against him, it would be an entirely different scenario. Chris McDaniels didn't run on an Obamaesque message of "hope and change" against someone who was already solidly conservative, or base his candidacy around being distantly related to Pelosi.